• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 774 0

is the big obstacle. I cannot escape. I don’t know why fate—I no longer believe in God—led me to Ulrik. Of course I was charmed by his fancy language and manners but I should have seen through the facade. Then Laura came along and you know how I hesitated to the last minute. You advised me to keep the child, but Laura has become my ball and chain. You think I am unfair to her. She is my love but not my life. Otherwise I have received mostly good advice from you. You have been the rock I can lean on in difficult times. I know that you wanted me and many times I have regretted the fact that I didn’t yield to you but you know why and we have talked about it so many times, that it would be hard for me to share a bed with you, my beloved little sister’s husband.

Laura was unable to keep reading. She crumpled up the pages in her hand and swept the other letters onto the floor.

Ann Lindell woke up with a start. She squeezed her piece of wood and listened with her ear pressed to the door. It was deathly silent in the house and she thought it was perhaps the scuttling and rattling of the rats that had woken her. But then she heard a scraping sound, as if someone was pulling a piece of furniture along the floor.

Had Laura returned? Ann didn’t know how long she had been gone. Ann had heard the phone ring, and a distraught Laura. Then it had not taken long before the front door was slammed shut.

Ann listened intently but heard nothing more. She rose warily to her feet. This is the moment of truth, she thought and the terror gripped her again. She had to get out of the basement! The dark, the rats, the stench, and above all the fact that she was locked in was suffocating her. It felt as if the air was running out. She drew a deep breath and hyperventilated. Nausea shot up, she burped, and noticed a sour taste in her mouth.

“Laura, open up!” she screamed in a shrill voice that she didn’t recognize as her own.

No reaction.

“Talk to me!”

She started to cry.

“Laura!”

Her screams echoed in the basement. The rats froze. She dropped the piece of wood that clunked down the steps.

The compact silence that followed was suddenly broken by something that sounded to Ann like tin cans rattling against each other. Thereafter there was intense movement. Laura must be walking around the house and her heels smacked against the parquet floor. She appeared to be in a great hurry. The steps came from the right, then from the left. For a while Ann thought someone was walking around on the second floor. The tapping of steps went past the basement door. A door was shut and then the taps returned.

“Laura!” Ann screamed.

There was silence for several seconds, then Laura continued.

She doesn’t care about me, Ann thought. What is she doing? Watering the plants? But Ann didn’t remember seeing any. Why is she running around in this way?

Then everything was quiet for a few seconds before Lindell heard a poof, followed by swift steps across the floor. The front door opened and shut. It was quiet for a couple of seconds before Ann started hearing a sound she couldn’t place. It sounded as if a great many people were in the house tittle-tattling, whispering secrets to each other. The sound intensified and became a whining, low-level roar.

She listened for a few seconds before she understood what it was: Laura had set fire to the house.

Forty-six

After the group communication that Ann Lindell was missing there was a restless atmosphere at the station. There were those who connected the disappearance with the impending visit by the queen. One of these was Säpo-Jern. He claimed with deliberation that it was very likely that Lindell had found a significant lead and either been stopped or had been stopped from communicating with the outside world.

He expressed annoyance at the crime team’s apparent lack of ability to communicate with each other.

“How is it possible that no one in Violent Crimes knows what their colleague is doing?” he asked rhetorically in a small-scale conference in Ottosson’s office.

If you only knew, Ottosson thought but held